At the beginning of January I offered free worldwide shipping on games bought from my website, as an effort to boost sales and to raise awareness of my games and company.
Due to some technical problems at PayPal, I've been unable to cancel the deal at the end of January like I planned, so it's still running on my website at the moment, and it will remain so until PayPal fix the problem with their buttons feature. I would say that this could be your last chance to take advantage of the offer, but it might finish Monday or it might finish in 2011!
Was the offer successful? I think it was. I sold nearly thirty games that I doubt I would have sold otherwise, either through my website or through retailers and distributors.
My big concern was that the offer would spark a rush of sales from countries where I already had distribution, effectively hurting those retailers and distributors who are already my customers. The good news is that only five of those sales were from countries where I already had distribution (four from the UK and one from Hawaii). The rest came predominantly from Australia (half of all the sales), the Far East and Norway.
One of my other reasons for the offer was that I hoped that getting the games into the hands of gamers would hopefully lead to some more sales - Aaron buys the game and plays it with Bob and Carol, Bob thinks it's okay, but Carol loves it and buys her own copy (which she later plays with Dave and Ellie ...). In one case this definitely happened, which is a great feeling. Aaron (real names have been changed!) bought a copy of Sumeria. A week later he bought another copy - he said he loved it and he was buying a copy for a friend. It's this kind of sale that's the ideal - the game is bought (this applies to all sales by definition), played (some collectors own hundreds of games they've never played), and the people who played it enjoyed it enough to lead to another sale.
In my mind that's a win, now I need to drive more sales, to hopefully lead to more. I'll blog again next week with what my next plan is.
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4 comments:
Hey, Jack Bauer. I tried making tiles but they come out horrible. I tried using an X-Acto knife. Are hand-made tiles ever going to be sale quality? Do I need a steel ruler and bigger knife? I saw this on Amazon, do you know anything about it?
http://www.amazon.com/Studios-Millimeter-Rotary-Perforator-Folding/dp/B000641G9Y
I wouldn't mind the tiles being punched out, but I fear I won't get that on the 1000 greyboard.
Also, the spray glue bled through and smudged the printout - how can I avoid this?
Thanks for your help.
Hiya Darren,
For Border Reivers I did triangular tiles on 2mm greyboard. I cut them out with a steel ruler and heavy duty craft knife (like a Stanley knife). While they weren't professional quality, I like to think they weren't too far off.
As for the printing, did you print on an inkjet printer? Inkjet ink is water soluble, so it will run if it gets damp. You need laser printing or professional digital printing (I got www.stressfreeprint.co.uk to do the printing for Border Reivers and the limited edition of It's Alive!).
Cheers,
Jack
Thanks very much for that Jack, that should solve my problem. I'll give stressfreeprint a go.
You're welcome.
Cheers,
Jack
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